NCJ Number
194503
Journal
Sexual Assault Report Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Dated: September/October 2001 Pages: 1-2,9,10
Date Published
2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article describes the effort to change the definition of rape used in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) System.
Abstract
The Women’s Law Project would like to change the definition to more accurately reflect societal and legal definitions of serious sexual assault. In a July 2001 letter signed by 80 sexual assault advocacy groups, the harmful impact of the UCR’s definition of rape on public knowledge about serious sex crimes and on the reporting and handling of sexual assault complaints was outlined. The narrowness of the UCR’s definition raises questions about the accuracy of the information released to the public regarding the level of serious sex crimes and resulting police response, contributes to the underreporting of sex crimes to the police, and negatively affects the level of resources committed to addressing sex crimes. The public is given more information about the incidence and effectiveness of police response to Part I crimes, which include murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson. The UCR publishes only arrest data for Part II crimes and only in broad generic categories and not for each crime. Since many crimes that are reported to law enforcement do not result in arrest, the data provided for Part II crimes is much less informative about how much crime is being committed. The only sex crime elevated to Part I status by the UCR is the crime of forcible rape. The definition of rape, unchanged since 1927, includes only forcible male penile penetration of a female. Omitted from the definition are oral and anal intercourse, penetration of the vagina and anus with an object or body part other than the penis, rape of males, rape of females by females, incest, statutory rape, and non-forcible rape. Many State criminal laws now recognize that all forms of nonconsensual sexual penetration regardless of gender, relationship, or mode of penetration are as serious as the criminal conduct included in the UCR definition of rape. The “hierarchy rule,” which permits the counting of only the highest Part I offense, complicates the picture further.